Micro-Stories: "If You Knew Susie"
©2000-2019 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Legal Stuff
The January 2000 reprint release of the 20670 "Susie-Q" 40 foot single door box car brought back memories of one of the first Micro-Trains cars I purchased. At the time, I was still living in New Jersey, and one of my goals was to accumulate a car from each of the rail lines that was in operation in the Garden State. Pennsylvania, New York Central, Erie Lackawanna... easy. Susquehanna? Not so easy. So when I saw the blister-packed kit (!) for the first Micro-Trains release of a Susquehanna box car, I grabbed it immediately. It didn't look quite the same, as you can see...
This car is actually catalog number 20300, released back in July 1981. You can see that "Susie-Q" isn't much more than an outline of herself in this iteration. (Even so, it's a desirable car among the collector set and rarely hits the aftermarket. Sorry, mine's a "runner"!)
And here is a good example of how far Micro-Trains has come since the earlier days. This is the first road number of Catalog 20670, which was released in November 1992. Besides the full color "Susie-Q," there are also end markings on this one, and less "generic" dimensional data.
And here's the reprint from January 2000. The differences are more subtle: "Susie-Q" is sharper and the color seperations are more defined. The "SUSQUEHANNA" roadname is sharper as well, and more ornate than in the 1992 release. I don't know for sure, but I'd say that the artwork was completely redone. Finally, the green body color is a couple of shades darker, more toward the "pine green" that I'm familiar with on the prototype. That's what we've come to expect from M/T, though, and they haven't disappointed. Compare this with the first "outline" run!
Micro-Trains reprinted this car again in August 2012. By this time, they'd gone to the eight digit catalog numbers (making this run 020 00 670) and switched to lower profile wheels.
But wait, there's more! In August 2019, MTL released a Weathered Version of this car. The aging effects are quite realistic. The Susie-Q sold off most of the prototype cars but kept a couple... and after a while they looked more like this than they didn't. The car also has the change to a lowered underframe and body mounted couplers, which was introduced in 2019.